I recall you reminiscing about the geopolitical heavyweights that your dad had assembled around the kitchen table of your youth, David. You undoubtedly internalized the substance of those heady conversations and surely prize those memories. The influence on your worldview must have been enormous! Not many kids were afforded such graduate school lessons as the potatoes were passed, and I would imagine none were as attentive as you. 

In contemporary America, I sense that many families are more likely to be huddled around the television, or on individual screens, with little real back-and-forth, but perhaps I'm cynical. 

Peter T.